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Regionally Encoded Toner Cartridges 'to Serve Customers Better'

Posted by timothy on from the for-your-convenience-we-have-glued-your-face-to-your-hand dept.

sandbagger writes: The latest attempt to create artificial scarcity comes from Xerox, according to the editors at TechDirt, who cite German sources: "Xerox uses region coding on their toner cartridges AND locks the printer to the first type used. So if you use a North America cartridge you can't use the cheaper Eastern Europe cartridges. The printer's display doesn't show this, nor does the hotline know about it. When c't reached out to Xerox, the marketing drone claimed, this was done to serve the customer better..."

27 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Done to _gouge_ the customer better by gweihir · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fixed that for you, Xerox.

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    1. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by idontgno · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your edit makes the market-bot's statement more objectively true, but from the company's perspective, the customer's number one problem is that they haven't given the company enough money yet.

      They're just helping their unfortunate customers with their money-infestation problem.

      "We'll just take that nasty revenue off your hands."

      --
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    2. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by FranTaylor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course you are perfectly right. After all, the primary purpose of any company in capitalism is to make more money, no matter the cost.

      you are wrong

      the primary purpose of any company in capitalism is to make more money for the owners

      everyone else can sod off

    3. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by lalleglad · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, capitalism as such is not the issue here, and the definition is as follows:

      An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

      So, a company has three major stakeholders (in no particular order):

      1. Owners for which the company should make a profit.
      2. Employees that should be taken care of so they can be efficient and make the company successful.
      3. Customers that should be take care of so they want to purchase the products or services from the company, so it can be successful.

      Xerox in this case seems to not fulfill #3. and for sure I will not purchase their products, or advice anyone else to do so.

      Actually, I think it should be unlawful to make a business case where the actual cost isn't reflected in the price, which could be like this region based split or like printer companies selling the printer device cheap and the ink or toner very expensive.

      At least the USA, Canada and EU should be able to make such rules as they have some concerns for the users and clout to enforce the rules.

      I hope, but I may be dreaming ...

    4. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Actually, I think it should be unlawful"

      You're not looking at this in the right way. It should be lawful to encrypt cartridges as a way of making more money, and it should be equally lawful for a customer to decrypt them as a way of saving money. THAT is how real capitalism would work.

      Xerox is ripping us off not by region encoding its products, but by using federal power to criminalize whatever consumer forms of post-purchase hacking of its product that consumer may find advantageous.

    5. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by bigfoottoo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sounds like somebody has been messing with your stapler!

    6. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Informative

      what is the c*t magazine everybody keeps speaking of? I know plenty of c*ts, but none who work at a magazine.

      It's not c*t, it's "c't", Which is somebody's clever way of extremely abbreviating Computerteknic. More formally, and translated to English, Magazine for Computer Technics. A venerable German tech publication, despite the brevity.

      http://www.heise.de/ct/

    7. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      OTOH, government could get rid of at least the part of the DMCA that allows companies like Xerox to make the region coding stick.

    8. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by ExekielS · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yea, he can totally go to one or 2-3 identical companies with identical products that do the exact same thing. SO MUCH FREEDOM! Only repeated studies show that if fewer than 5 companies hold more than 70% market share, there is no measurable competition, and therefore no relationship between supply, demand, and price. Just look up the list of things required for perfect competition, a third of the items are physically impossible, a third extremely unlikely, and less than 5% of the factors exist when markets have so few major players. Markets are only free if they are very competitive. Xerox can only get away with this because they don't have to care about pissing off customers, so long as they aren't an order of magnitude worse than their fellow giants.

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    9. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by Shompol · · Score: 4, Informative

      Where in the motherfucking hell do you find anything about "federal power" preventing you from hacking

      This law does exist, regardless of whether you know about it or not. I think it's called Anti-circumvention millenium.... here you go

    10. Re:Done to _gouge_ the customer better by narcc · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's funny!

      See, most of their customers, including their largest customers, are very likely to be unaffected by the change as they're not buying off-brand or foreign toner cartridges. (Possibly due to service contracts or vendor related issues.) Smaller companies are stuck for years with expensive equipment; even if they're upset, that anger will fade (or the person in-change of that decision long replaced) by the time they upgrade. Worse, if Xerox is successful, and region locking turns out to make sense financially, others will follow suit quickly.

      In short, the market *can't* fix this.

      If Xerox drops this initiative, it's because the cost of implementing region locking starts to exceed the projected losses from resold cartridges. It's not going to come from consumer rebellion, as the free market fanatics would have you believe, as consumers in this case are almost universally either powerless or apathetic.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  2. to Serve Customers Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spoilers: it's a cookbook.

  3. Seems logical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Otherwise you would end up printing in PAL instead of NTSC.

    1. Re:Seems logical by bkmoore · · Score: 5, Funny

      Otherwise you would end up printing in PAL instead of NTSC.

      The page size would be DIN A4 instead of Letter.
      The resolution would be in DPM instead of DPI.
      The printer would get 30 days paid vacation off per year from first use instead of five vacation days for the first year, two additional days per year until maximum 10 days off.
      The printer might print on the left side of the page.
      American words such as "color", "trash", "apartment", "cop", or "truck" might be printed as "colour", "rubbish", "flat", "bobby", and "lory"

      Thanks XEROX from saving us from all this confusion.

    2. Re:Seems logical by TWX · · Score: 5, Funny

      Trust me, with my experience with modern Xerox products, they already get too many 30 day vacations.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  4. Can't we just stop printing? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do we get through so much paper? Everything is electronic now, but much of it seems to need a printed copy too.

    1. Re:Can't we just stop printing? by by+(1706743) · · Score: 5, Funny

      When I was staying in Europe for a few weeks (I'm from the USA) I had to wire some money over to the landlord. So I opened the PDF form from my (American) credit union, filled in the details, pasted in a signature and sent it back. "Sorry sir, but we are unable to accept an electronic copy; please print out the form, sign it, and then scan+email or fax it over."

      So of course I just opened the document in GIMP, rotated it slightly, added some noise, turned down the contrast and sent it back. Landlord was happy, credit union was happy, and all I had to do was forge my own documents...

  5. And by "serve" ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They mean it in the "bend over and get 'served'" sense of the word?

    God but Xerox and the other printer companies are ran by assholes.

    And, of course, they can now use the DMCA to prevent someone making cartridges.

    This is why we can't have nice things. Because idiot politicians have given all the power to corporations, and consumers no longer have any choice in the matter but to get fucked^Wserverd however is dictated to them.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  6. Demand segmentation 101 by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess this is the next logical step from HP chipping ink cartridges to enforce an expiration date.

    This must have looked like an amazing idea on some MBA's PowerPoint presentation -- manufacture the exact same thing, sell it for more in the developed world, -and- increase market share in the developing world. Just have to hope the customers don't find out about it....oops.

    Airlines do this all the time. They charge more for last minute purchases or travel over holidays even though the customer is getting the same service -- moving them from point to point. Why? Because they can!! The difference in this case is that Xerox can now force customers to keep paying the higher fare.

    1. Re:Demand segmentation 101 by TWX · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep. Pricing for airlines seems to be a follows:

      Far-in-advance purchases, airline hasn't decided 100% to have the flight yet. Prices are a little higher because early demand can dictate whether or not the flight even occurs or not. If the supply (ie, the flight) is not guaranteed, then the burden falls on demand.

      Once enough tickets are booked to make the flight likely, the airline now wants to sell as many seats as possible, so prices drop as supply now outstrips demand. The airline knows about how much per-seat it costs to fly the plane both occuppied and empty, so it's in their interest to sell seats even sometimes at a loss if it is less of a loss than flying without passengers, and based on past performance they can attempt to balance that number.

      As the plane approaches capacity the airlines start adjusting the nature of supply and demand. They know that last-minute passengers are unlikely to purchase expensive first-class seats regardless of a lack of availablity of coach seats, so if the first-class cabin is empty or mostly empty they'll upgrade frequent flyers so that their less-expensive coach seats can now be priced at a high but not impossibly-high price for last-minute fares.

      When you fly the same route a lot, you learn how that route is priced throughout the year and how the various flights on that route fill. We've found the most common flight we use about six times a year makes sense to book 8 to 6 weeks out from flying, depending on what holidays are around then and if there are any other large-travel days like the start or end of college.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  7. Its a Cook Book!!! by random+coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "To Server Customers Better"
    Its a cook book!

  8. Talked to our purchasing dept. by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Informative
    They are going to follow up on this with Xerox. If it is correct, Xerox will be removed from our vendor list.

    .
    When companies are so blatant about wanting to overcharge their customers, it makes it real easy to identify them and remove the bad companies from our approved vendor list.

  9. This has been going on for decades by p51d007 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been in the copier/printer/fax/computer business for over 30 years. Region locking things has been going on for about that long. It first started with designing a tab, prong or other plastic part, to prevent a cartridge from working. Savin, some Lanier, Ricoh boxes are the same, but their cartridges won't fit. Toshiba, some lanier, Kyocera boxes are the same, but their toner won't fit. They use to do it with the above mentioned "break away" tabs (if you knew what to change), but that wasn't good enough, so they put a different drive gear coupling on the rear. But that wasn't good enough. Now a lot of them have either a CRM chip, or an RFID chip on the back of the cartridge that gets close enough to the one in the machine to read it. If they don't match, it won't work. In the "olden" days of dry toner copier, they did this to prevent a person from refilling the toner cartridges. With the color copiers/printers, the particle sizes have reached such a small size, and, the temperature melting points are becoming so small, that if you vary the toner or carrier just a very small amount, it makes a mess and can destroy some components. The DRM on cartridges is a PITA because if you slap a genuine new one in, and it doesn't read, it creates a service call. Sometimes, you can go in and tell it to look for the cartridge again, but if that doesn't work, you have to reject the cartridge and RMA it back to the company.

  10. Re:We are stupid by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Informative

    Epson seems to be inching into the right direction: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...

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  11. Region Locking by Elder+Entropist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So if they region lock it so we can't use the (same, but) cheaper cartridges from Eastern Europe and Asia, can we region lock it so they can't use the cheaper workers from Easter Europe and Asia?

  12. What did you expect him to say? The truth? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Yeah, we did that to ensure that we can gouge as much as possible. You see, international trade and benefiting from cheap labor abroad is only good if we can profit from it, not when it cuts into our profits."

    Seriously? Did you expect him to tell you the truth? C'mon, be reasonable.

    --
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  13. Language Problem by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The release was written in Neuspeak, invented first for banks and hotels in the mid-twentieth century.

    In neuspeak, "for your convenience" really means "for our profit."

    "For your safety" means "For our convenience."

    Neuspeak is spreading slowly to other industries, as well, but its form and syntax were perfected when used on a sign on a shuttered bank office in Sycamore, Ohio, which read: "For your convenience, this branch is closed."